Studying the science gender gap at the high school level

Preliminary results from a new study show that girls are apathetic about …

Fewer women than men pursue scientific education, and fewer still pursue a scientific career—this may be well known, but it's far from well understood. Researchers from Northern Illinois University have released preliminary results from a recent study of high school science classes, when students first have the opportunity to pursue science in earnest. The research looks at the relationships among classroom activities, gender, and instructors to pin down exactly what is turning girls off science.

One of the goals of the project was to study whether males and females experience and respond differently to science content and instructional approaches. While the findings come from a preliminary data analysis, they do show a marked difference in the way the two genders experience the same science class.

The researchers collected data from 244 students in 12 science classrooms during two five-day periods. The classes included 4 different subjects—General Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics—each taught in 3 rooms. All of the students received vibrating pagers and were paged twice during the course of each class and asked to record what they were doing at that moment, as well as their thoughts and feelings about it. The researchers also surveyed students and teachers, conducted interviews with teachers, and collected demographic information and grades from the students' school records.

The study found that males generally had a more positive attitude towards science than females. Female students reported higher levels of stress and boredom during science class, though they reported finding the topic less challenging than males did. Despite finding it more challenging, males reported feeling more skilled at science than females did and, when the material became more challenging, they reported that their engagement increased.

When females felt challenged, or the task at hand was perceived to be "important" (like taking a test as opposed to listening to a lecture), they reported feeling less engaged with the material at hand.

Males and females also found different varieties of activities engaging. Both enjoy discussions in class, but females prefer seatwork and lectures and particularly disliked presentations, while males preferred the more "public" activities like labs and presentation. The study also found that classrooms were more likely to be dominated by male participation—33 percent of the classes had mostly male participation, while only 9 percent were dominated by females; the remainder had equal participation.

In addition to the students' experience in class, the project also looked at how teachers shaped and responded to their science classes. All teachers were quick to say there were no gender difference in aptitude for science but, when prompted to identify a student who was likely to pursue a science career, only 3 out of 13 picked a female student. They generally described the high-achieving males in their class as having significant intellectual capacity, calling them "smart" or "a natural," while females were usually described as being hard workers in pursuit of good grades.

Although the study is preliminary, its primary result—girls are not enjoying their science classes—is not terribly surprising. The more important question to answer is why girls aren't as engaged as boys.

During their research, the team took extensive video footage of several class sessions. These captured the interactions of the students and teachers, and provide a record of what exactly the class was engaged in when the students' pagers went off. That may ultimately provide some indication of how scientific instruction might be re-centered to encourage female engagement. The authors estimate that the video will take about a year to analyze fully.

80 Reader Comments

Funny how the "gender gap" doesn't apply to foreign women. I see plenty of Soviet bloc women in the physics and chemistry labs, plenty of Chinese women in the math department and plenty of Indian women in CS.

It's a pity that so many resources are expended trying to get the horse to the water, but she doesn't want to drink. Meanwhile boys are falling behind at every level, on every measure but nobody cares because boys grow up to be men, who are just disposable.

How about studying the nursing gap? Or the education gap? Or the liberal arts gap? Or even the growing chasm between male and female college admissions and graduations?

As a high school teacher and previous researcher at a university physics education group, this study points out what the general consensus is in terms of physics education research: gender differences are not well understood at all and time is better spent working on curriculum that has measurable results for groups rather than individuals.

Obviously this study is just a beginning and the general trends, such as girls apathy toward science, are worth noting and possibly worth responding to in terms of some additional attention by primary/secondary teachers. Other than some 'extra attention', the problem I see is that this study is really fishing around at what looks to be a nature vs nurture issue and producing any set of 'fixes' will be problematic at best in my experience.

This quote from the executive summary seems important to me: "At the end of the academic year, we were given access to students’ grades for the science course in which we observed them. Among the students in our sample, the average science grade at year’s end was 2.01 – a ‘C’. Consistent with national trends in high school science achievement, no gender differences in science grades were found." Even though the girls were more apathetic, performance in the class was 'normal' and there were no gender differences noted in the final grade distribution.

With what is presented and including anything I've ever seen, we don't know whether its in the girl's nature to be apathetic or if they are 'broken' at an earlier point by the education system, or their parents, or social issues/pressures. I know this is a glass half-empty statement, but I'm not confident we'll ever solve this issue due to the difficulty of doing this type of research. We also don't know whether there are connected issues, such as difficulties in mathematics or modeling that are affecting their interest in science. I guess it gives something for the social scientists to do.

i realize it's more complex than this, but Mark Laarson really hits it with his comments - why does there seem to be so much emphasis on making girls into boys?

also, in general i think the source of the differences is outside the scope of those science classes. the classes seem to have a balance of "male" and "female" ways of learning, as was the case with my recollection of classes.

additionally - does i make anyone wonder if there may be some real benefit to gender-based schooling?

Originally posted by Messy:i realize it's more complex than this, but Mark Laarson really hits it with his comments - why does there seem to be so much emphasis on making girls into boys?

Huh? How is trying to explain the science gender gap 'making girls into boys'? Are you trying to say that trying to get girls interested in science is turning them into a 'boy' because science is for boys?

How about the idea that getting more _people_ interested in science is good for our society, and right now trying to explain why, particularly in the US, it is difficult motivating girls to move into science may in the long run grow our intellectual and technical resources.

@Ozy: I think the question is, "why is everyone concerned about getting women interested in fields traditionally considered to be 'male' fields, when no one cares about getting men interested in fields traditionally dominate by women?" And the answer probably is, "fields traditionally dominated by men pay more." So when the men aren't being given the opportunity to get into the traditionally-female fields, they're not losing potential income.

Originally posted by Ozy:Huh? How is trying to explain the science gender gap 'making girls into boys'? Are you trying to say that trying to get girls interested in science is turning them into a 'boy' because science is for boys?

How about the idea that getting more _people_ interested in science is good for our society, and right now trying to explain why, particularly in the US, it is difficult motivating girls to move into science may in the long run grow our intellectual and technical resources.

There's a science gender gap because men's and women's brains are different. Less girls are interested in science than boys and fewer still are good at it.

After the 1970's experiments of making boys play with dolls and girls play with tanks didn't work out, this is what feminists have seized on.

It might be a better idea to drop the women-firsting and focus on getting children interested in science. When you put flowers and baubles on it to attract girls, you're going to turn away boys too. Don't dumb it down and see how the real science-girls come out and embrace it.

Originally posted by trimeta:@Ozy: I think the question is, "why is everyone concerned about getting women interested in fields traditionally considered to be 'male' fields, when no one cares about getting men interested in fields traditionally dominate by women?" And the answer probably is, "fields traditionally dominated by men pay more." So when the men aren't being given the opportunity to get into the traditionally-female fields, they're not losing potential income.

Is competitiveness one of the differences for the change in engagement?

From the executive summary,

quote:

When females report feeling more challenged, their engagement goes down. Similarly, when the activity is perceived by students to be important, males engage while females tend to disengage.

My hypothesis is that challenges and public presentations that were found to be more engaging by males, reflect competitive situations. The competitive situations engage the males, and disengage the females. The hypothesis requires that men be generally more competitive than women, a results which appears to be true. From another paper,

quote:

Our experimental results reveal interesting differences in competitiveness: in the patriarchal society women are less competitive than men, a result consistent with student data drawn from Western cultures. Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men.

At the end of the day, if there were some relatively closed form solutions to getting girls more interested in science I think its worth the effort. The problem is the field of social science is so fraught with experimental problems and the field of education is so complicated due to the number of uncontrolled variables that I can't see the time worth spending on these gender issues at this point. As I said earlier and Laarson also said, time is better spent on getting improvements across an entire group than looking for ways to hit individuals - its really just an issue of resources and getting the most bang for your buck.

Originally posted by Messy:i realize it's more complex than this, but Mark Laarson really hits it with his comments - why does there seem to be so much emphasis on making girls into boys?

also, in general i think the source of the differences is outside the scope of those science classes. the classes seem to have a balance of "male" and "female" ways of learning, as was the case with my recollection of classes.

additionally - does i make anyone wonder if there may be some real benefit to gender-based schooling?

Actually, the first thing to do would be to find out if there really is an innate tendency for boys to like science and girls to be bored by it, or if it's just another social construct. Nowadays it's relatively "ok" to be a geek boy - but geek girls will have a much harder time, I think. Maybe they just forget about it and join the cheerleading squad out of peer pressure? I'm obviously exaggerating here, don't flame me for sexism

As for gender-based schooling - and this is a personal opinion - I think it's taking things way too far, way too soon. The gender issue isn't really well understood yet, either from a social sciences perspective or from a more biological perspective. And then you'd also have to consider all the disadvantages of gender-based schooling, such as incrased gender gaps, possibly affecting socialization as we know it.

I mean, few countries have ability-based differentiated schooling (i.e. if you can't keep up with the subjects, you're directed to more technical schools and curricula), let alone gender-based ones. I don't expect to see it for a very long time, if ever.

Originally posted by Mark Laarson:Discrimination is wrong no matter who is the bigot.

You must be new here (where by "here" I mean "the US"); discrimination is OK as long as it's against white men.

You must be old here, White men have been the only safe discrimination target for the past 2 decades in the US its just taking the opposition some time to get up to steam after centuries of being the underdog.

(i.e. - Minority Quotas)

But thats not the point, and I do distinctly agree with your @Ozy comment trimeta. Also if you were being sarcastic, props, you got me :-)

The focus should be at getting more people interested in science, and not more men or women specifically. But this study is just of where the origins of the gender gap are starting, and its not in High School its much earlier than that IMHO.

Originally posted by Ozy:Huh? How is trying to explain the science gender gap 'making girls into boys'? Are you trying to say that trying to get girls interested in science is turning them into a 'boy' because science is for boys?

How about the idea that getting more _people_ interested in science is good for our society, and right now trying to explain why, particularly in the US, it is difficult motivating girls to move into science may in the long run grow our intellectual and technical resources.

There's a science gender gap because men's and women's brains are different. Less girls are interested in science than boys and fewer still are good at it.

Well, I'm glad you explained it then, all those researchers might as well pack it in and go home.

Also, must be something special about the female brain in the _US_ then. And you also must not have read the article which states that women are actually _less_ challenged in science classes, but still feel less engaged.

quote:

After the 1970's experiments of making boys play with dolls and girls play with tanks didn't work out, this is what feminists have seized on.

It might be a better idea to drop the women-firsting and focus on getting children interested in science. When you put flowers and baubles on it to attract girls, you're going to turn away boys too. Don't dumb it down and see how the real science-girls come out and embrace it.

WTF? Who suggested that the idea was to put flowers and baubles on science to make it attractive to women? What makes you think that making science interesting and accessible to people who are disengaged (which are more women than men) wouldn't make it more attractive to _all_?

Do you even have a valid point other than trying to tie this into some sort of anti-feminist backlash? Your comment about flowers and baubles attracting women to science is probably the sort of attitude that causes this gap in the first place. Thanks a lot.

The US needs scientific capability, and if 1/2 of your brain pool is being turned off because of something that you can discover and then fix, seems like a pretty important thing to figure out, especially if we want to stay competitive with countries where the female brain doesn't seem to have this difference that you're so sure about.

My personal guess is that it's primarily social pressures that seem to take effect starting sometime in junior high, at least here in the US, where some jackasses decide that women should only be interested in flowers and baubles.

Originally posted by Mark Laarson:Discrimination is wrong no matter who is the bigot.

You must be new here (where by "here" I mean "the US"); discrimination is OK as long as it's against white men.

Waaaaaahhhh! We white males are so discriminated against! Let's look at _any_ measure of success in the US, business ownership, wealth, political power, education, etc... white males dominate FAR over their population percentage. Must because of our massive innate superiority I suppose, to overcome such discriminatory barriers that we supposedly face!

Yeah, we have it so rough.

FFS, anyone who can claim that white males are discriminated against in our society is delusional. Simply pathetic.

Although the study is preliminary, its primary result—girls are not enjoying their science classes—is not terribly surprising. The more important question to answer is why girls aren't as engaged as boys.

For the same reason why it's so difficult to get boys to sit through an English class. It's boring, dude!!!

Seriously, I co-teach a high school science class, as well as math classes and literacy. One thing to note: Science class requires proficiency in both literacy AND math. Which groups are better in each subject? Female students do better in literacy classes, male students do better in math classes. It's a trend that I've had to track over the past 5 years for grades 1 through 12.

In a science class, I've observed the same things in the study: in a lecture setting, female students are engaged, taking notes, "getting into it". The male students are bored out of their freaking minds, acting up, getting glares from the girls because they won't stop being annoying, doodling, even snoozing.

Reverse the scenario: during a lab (Freshman and Sophomore physical science and biology, math and literacy are what I co-teach), the guys are elbows deep into the activity, while the girls hang back. The guys dominate the activity through their sheer physicality, sometimes literally shoving girls out of the way. I oftentimes have to intervene because the girls are complaining.

Such exuberance in a class is very welcome, but not at the expense of steamrolling girls out of participating. Other girls, well, at the risk of sounding "non-pc", don't want to get into labs because they don't want to get their hands dirty, especially when it comes to dissection. Or, it could be making streak plates when studying geology, or mixing chemicals because they stink.

In the end, I believe that the answer to the question that these researchers are asking can be found by simply observing the differences in behaviors and preferences in boys and girls, something that all of us have done since the day we were born. It's really that simple.

Our experimental results reveal interesting differences in competitiveness: in the patriarchal society women are less competitive than men, a result consistent with student data drawn from Western cultures. Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men.

Just some armchair science, perhaps totally BS.Jeffrey

Interesting, although aren't pretty much all societies patriarchal except for some grass huts types?

daemonius: When you think nerd, do you think boy? When you think pimple-faced geek, do you think boy?

Most women don't get into science for the same reason that they don't get into D&D and Warhammer 40k - nerdly activities attract far more boys than girls. Also, I don't think the sciences are especially glorified or highly-paid nowadays. The megabucks are elsewhere. I'd rather be a DV coordinator than a lab jockey, for example.

Ozy: If the US needs scientist talent, the dollars would probably best be spent on attracting the best and the brightest regardless of gender, not "women" as a whole.

Originally posted by Mark Laarson:How about studying the nursing gap? Or the education gap?

Gee, what's the difference between those fields and the science and engineering fields? About $15k a year?

quote:

Or the liberal arts gap?

You know, I was just discussing this with my friends; what we really need is MORE liberal arts majors. /sarcasm.

quote:

Or even the growing chasm between male and female college admissions and graduations?

Yes, this might be a problem. But it's not clear that it is. Statistics is a funny little beast and I'd be curious about much of the difference in admissions is explained by something like Simpson's paradox, especially in the light of the entire subject of this thread. At any rate, getting better stats on what and why it's happening is the first step.

Originally posted by Mark Laarson:There's a science gender gap because men's and women's brains are different.

Proof?

Oh wait, there isn't any. This is no different than arguing certain races are more intelligent (whatever that means) than others.

Uhhh, actually, it's not at all the same as arguing that.

Men have an entire extra chromosome that women don't have. Men and women release different quantities of multiple hormones, which are known to change the expression of different genes. Genetically speaking then, it's certainly plausible that men and women have differences between their brains.

Physically, it's pretty clear that men and women are different (in case you haven't noticed). I think it would be odd if those differences *didn't* extended to the brain. Just google 'gender brain differences' for more information.

Don't buy the argument that men and women are the same, we're not. Before we can make schooling truly equitable, these differences need to be recognized and better understood.

Mark Laarson was specifically attributing the "gender gap" in science to differences in male and female brains. And there is in fact little or no evidence for that claim. It is quite similar to claiming that the racial differences in crime rate are because "blacks" and "whites" are different. He doesn't say what those differences are nor does he give any kind of rigorous scientific explanation to show that those differences explain the gender differences in American society. Of course, considering that this is a problem that is by no means universal, he has little hope of making such an explanation.

Ozy: If the US needs scientist talent, the dollars would probably best be spent on attracting the best and the brightest regardless of gender, not "women" as a whole.

Unless you think that the 'best and the brightest' has nothing to do with motivating them early on in their educational career in the first place, then why would you be against trying to figure out what's turning off 1/2 of our population?

Would you rather attract the 'best and the brightest' from the full pool, or one that has already been artificially constrained because, perhaps, of some idiotic social pressure.

The larger the pool you have to drawn upon, the better off you are in getting the 'best and the brightest'.

what i am saying is - why is the boy's level of engagement considered the baseline for how the girls should be engaged?

I'm not sure what you mean by baseline, but it's simple. If, as seen in other countries, there is no difference in scientific engagement and ability between the genders, and yet such a gender gap _does_ show up here in the US, then clearly there is some underlying cause that is social and not biological.

And, unless one thinks that artificially constraining our scientific pool is acceptable, or even desirable, it makes sense to figure out and fix the reasons why this gap occurs _here in the US_.

Ideally both the girls and the boys should be more engaged than they are considering that the US seems to be falling behind in general. However, girls are further behind, and therefore can offer a larger boost if we can figure out why.

This is a deep and complex question and I suspect there will be no easy answer.

However, women have different interests and I suspect no amount of jiggering will change the statistical result. Look at any hobby - model trains, computers, ham radio; sports like dirt biking, surfing, mountain climbing... Men don't just dominate. In many pass-times, women participating is in itself an anomoly.

OK, you say - but those hobbies are for nerds; most guys would be caught dead doing them, let alone girls. Yet even a "cool" hobby, like hot cars - girls are not interested. Obviously, girls don't typically play sports like football or hockey, where weight and physical strength put them at a disadvantage. Even in sports like skiing, "where it's perfectly OK to be a girl", the crazy and wild skiiers - going fast or on extra-steep slopes - tend to overwhelmingly be the boys.

I think of home omputing when I first got into it, in the late 70's and early 80's. (Commodore Pet, anyone?) It was a brand new, fresh, wide open field; so you can't as easily claim gender bias as, say, hot rods or toy trains. Yet, girls were so disinterested that any one was a complete novelty; while boys couldn't get enough of this new toy. Similarly, it's obvious different video games appeal differently to boys and girls. Again, that's new enough and can be practised in you own living room, so it's not like there's a long social history of discouraging girls from playing videogames... But who obsesses over them?

In my university Business Computing class 30 years ago (the most career oriented of the lot) I did a quick count one day. Of 160 students, a third were visibly minorities. (Asian or south-asian mostly - Canada is like that). there were 15 females or about 10%; 9 were visbile minority, 6 were white.

What I have noticed is that women tend to cluster in biological sciences, and other "different fields". My alma mater noted about the mid-80's that women outnumbered men going into medical school. Last stat I saw was 60-40 women now. If they have obsessive hobbies, girls are more likely to be things like horse-jumping (note the biology tie-in) rather than motocross.

Is it social conditioning? The point about immigrants is not too determinant - after all, we select immigrants based on job demand, so of course we let a lot of IT-trained females in. Perhaps other countries are not as "fluff-orient" with the enterntainment their children are immersed in; the "why doesn't HE like me, why do all the other girls hate me" angst fluff on shows like Miley Cyrus, rather than "what am I going to do with my life? how will I pay my bills in 20 years?" practical stuff.

Also, women rarely tend to be as driven or competitive as men in the same situations. Perhaps its social conditioning or biological, but they often are more likely to defer to a more determined competitor rather than fight to the bitter end. That's why the guy usually wins, and ends up at the top of the ladder. Biological or social? Who knows...

Originally posted by Mark Laarson:There's a science gender gap because men's and women's brains are different.

Proof?

Oh wait, there isn't any. This is no different than arguing certain races are more intelligent (whatever that means) than others.

Uhhh, actually, it's not at all the same as arguing that.

Men have an entire extra chromosome that women don't have. Men and women release different quantities of multiple hormones, which are known to change the expression of different genes. Genetically speaking then, it's certainly plausible that men and women have differences between their brains.

Physically, it's pretty clear that men and women are different (in case you haven't noticed). I think it would be odd if those differences *didn't* extended to the brain. Just google 'gender brain differences' for more information.

Don't buy the argument that men and women are the same, we're not. Before we can make schooling truly equitable, these differences need to be recognized and better understood.

BS in Biology or Chemistry ... can you get a job without an advanced degree in these fields? I'm betting it pays way less than $50k

It's not fair comparing nursing degrees that don't require a BS to engineering degrees that require a 4 year degree. Perhaps you could compare a non-4 year nursing degree with trade degree like a skilled machinist would get.

the baseline is the reference point. the goal. the end. the result. the target, etc.

and boys seem to be continually be the reference point in these studies.

"girls are not as interested in science class as <reference point>"

in this case

"girls are not as interested in science class as boys"

the boys are the baseline.

i'm not trying to make some grand point about anything. i'm just explaining what i meant about "making girls into boys" ie: making their achievement levels and ways those of boys. putting their accomplishments and methods in the context soley of boys.

the baseline is the reference point. the goal. the end. the result. the target, etc.

and boys seem to be continually be the reference point in these studies.

"girls are not as interested in science class as <reference point>"

in this case

"girls are not as interested in science class as boys"

the boys are the baseline.

i'm not trying to make some grand point about anything. i'm just explaining what i meant about "making girls into boys" ie: making their achievement levels and ways those of boys. putting their accomplishments and methods in the context soley of boys.

If you're doing a study based on a gender gap, then what else are you going to compare boys and girls to besides each other?

but i think what bugs me mostly is that even though the study says the outcomes are pretty much the same for the genders in class, that somehow the shortcoming is the girls and that the boys are what should be emulated. it still seems like a male context.

i think it's safe to say that how you play the game of school does not necessarily translate to how well you play the game of business and vocation.

Those numbers seem rather low; I was making $65K/year as an EE intern, and I don't even have an engineering degree. And that was in Austin, Texas.

And how many women are coming out with a BSN versus the number of men being pumped out of engineering programs? How many out of liberal arts degrees and into teaching positions? Don't cherry pick, show the reality.

quote:

BS in Biology or Chemistry ... can you get a job without an advanced degree in these fields? I'm betting it pays way less than $50k

It's not fair comparing nursing degrees that don't require a BS to engineering degrees that require a 4 year degree.

Your numbers are explicitly comparing someone with a bachelors in nursing, which is a 4 year degree.

quote:

Perhaps you could compare a non-4 year nursing degree with trade degree like a skilled machinist would get.

Or why don't you compare a teacher's salary with the salary of someone with a bachelors in the hard sciences or engineering, instead of cherry picking your figures.

Anyways, the bottom line remains. Women are disproportionately likely to go into lower paying fields than men, resulting in a overall discrepancy in earnings. No matter how you slice it, that's the current reality in the states.

Mark Laarson was specifically attributing the "gender gap" in science to differences in male and female brains. And there is in fact little or no evidence for that claim. It is quite similar to claiming that the racial differences in crime rate are because "blacks" and "whites" are different. He doesn't say what those differences are nor does he give any kind of rigorous scientific explanation to show that those differences explain the gender differences in American society. Of course, considering that this is a problem that is by no means universal, he has little hope of making such an explanation.

Nice job trying to bring race into it. Don't troll. Stick to the subject. Is there any country on earth where women are just as into science and just as good at it as men?

I do agree that there has historically been social pressure for women to not study, etc etc but (in the US) that pretty much ended a long time ago. And it was a product of the times. Many men also went entire lifetimes not learning how to read or write. Meanwhile, the social pressure for men to die for their country, work in dangerous professions, go into coalmines etc continues unabated.

Ozy: I don't think the "gender gap" is studied because these people want more homegrown scientists in America, but rather more female scientists. The two may not be mutually exclusive, but they're not the same thing either. It's like asking why gender "equality" is supposed to be called feminism.

1. funny2. pretty stereotyped3. Completely missing the boat as far as the kids I see... but then they aren't typical

I have a 15 year old daughter ... but she's not typical. Being the only child raised mostly by a dad who's on the physics faculty of a university ... is not typical.

A lot of her friends are more typical tho, the kids in her public highschool are pretty typical seen in aggregate.

And what I see in this crowd doesn't follow the old stereotypes at all, the ones that applied when I was a teenager.

* largely across the board, statistically the brighter girls slay the boys in all subjects. There's only two boys in a big highschool class who can keep up with a pack of about 50 girls (i.e. ask the question of how many boys are in contention to be valedictorian vs how many girls). Those two boys are very sharp, one of them is the only kid I see who "might become a real mathematician" ... but there are only two of them. Most of the boys are slackers... when you come to it.

If you look at the list of the kids on the "high honor roll" poster (GPA over 95 and in at least 3 AP classes) it really hits you: almost all girls.

* These girls all "do science" and they "do math." They are in the AP math track, will get Calculus in senior year. The only thing(s) they don't like to do are the science labs, particularly any lab that might involve dissection. One can question why they don't like the other labs though ....

* When I was a teenager there was a genuine "pocket protector/slide rule" geek crowd of boys. That crowd just doesn't seem to exist anymore. The computer-geek crowd is smaller, not as interested in actually learning stuff, and not so universally male.

* the crowd of guys who were into hobbies where you actually made soemthing technical work is mostly gone too. No ham radio nuts in this high-school, not even a pack of guys who hot-rod cars. Those hobbies taught you how to actually deal with real physical reality, ... debug stuff, think about second-order physics problems etc.

Now... having discussed what I see among these teenagers ... here's what I see as the "big deal" here ... you ask my daughter what she wants to be? She wants to be a middle-school teacher. You ask most of these very bright girls what they want to be ... and there's a range of answers but AFAIK none of them envision themselves as scientists or engineers, although one of my daughter's best friends envisions herself going into "computer imaging."

Why is this, given that they are plenty bright? I think it is a mix of reasons but a lot of it is that they just see engineering and the sciences as unrewarding: a lot of very hard work and long years of school, high pressure, big problems as far as being able to reconcile it with having a family ... they see a very unappealing work and life environment with poor rewards.

One BIG issue is that they all know that engineering is often a low-job-security profession ... and that the sciences often involve years of work to get to the post-doc level ... and if you don't make it then, the fallback opportunities really are pretty piss poor for the investment to that point. I think that women tend to be more risk-averse about their career options ... they want steady jobs.

If you ask almost any of them about this the revealing comment often comes around to "if I wanted to work that hard, I'd go to med school instead ... at least you get something for that." And I think that's what at least some of these women may end up doing too.

Why is there this big push for women in the sciences and engineering anyway? Think about this for a second ... historically "pink collar" jobs have had poorer pay ... and our society has opened jobs (e.g. Rosie the Riveter) to women when men who could/would take the job were scarce ... and thrown those women right back out when the men came back.

Remember that a great deal of the "pressure" for more women in engineering and science is just to get more bodies into engineering and science ... as these fields become less attractive as careers ... so hey!

Remember Carly Fiorina and her campaign for more women engineers and scientists? Oh right, Carly left it to be a manager of a company that needs more cheap/disposable engineers.

If our society wants more women scientists and engineers, it will need to change the work conditions in those fields. After a certain point (and that point is now in college more than in high-school for the brighter girls) most girls give up on these subjects for the most sensible of reasons: they don't want to do that for a living, because they see it as a sucky work environment/career.

Here's a post by a famous theoretical computer scientist musing over the gender gap in CS/math academia in the states and the lack of a gap in Italy (his birthplace). Basically, he conjectures that the difference can be chalked up to a difference in standing for academics. While American academics are certainly not wealthy, professors rarely starve to death. But in Italy, funding is very low and salaries are poor and it's just not a great job.

That seems to be a fairly reasonable take on some of the career differences here; the jobs that women take disproportionately tend to be less desirable and lower paying. Yeah, sure someone will pipe in "what about garbage men?" or something similar, but there are pretty good biological reasons to expect physically demanding jobs to be filled more often by men than women. There aren't such scientific reasons for the sciences.

Originally posted by Glaucus:Anyways, the bottom line remains. Women are disproportionately likely to go into lower paying fields than men, resulting in a overall discrepancy in earnings. No matter how you slice it, that's the current reality in the states.

Anyways, the bottom line remains. Women are disproportionately likely to marry up than men, resulting in a overall discrepancy in spending power. No matter how you slice it, the current reality is that women spend 80 cents out of every consumer dollar in the states.

Are you implying that:a) Men are "pumped out" of engineering colleges, implying that the patriarchy did all the workb) Women are "forced into" lower-paying degrees and professions against their will, in the face of a mountain of evidence that they choose jobs and even promotions based on factors other than money

Ozy: I don't think the "gender gap" is studied because these people want more homegrown scientists in America, but rather more female scientists. The two may not be mutually exclusive, but they're not the same thing either. It's like asking why gender "equality" is supposed to be called feminism.

They aren't the same thing, but they both are indeed desired by mostly the same people, and could in fact be related. It just so happens that this particular study is looking at the gender gap instead of the US-China gap, or the US-India gap. There are lots of gaps to bridge if we want to remain competitive. The gender gap is one of them that may, or may not, be more tractable.

And, finding out and fixing why women tend to be disproportionately turned off by science may actually go a ways towards attracting more men to the field as well, if for no other reason that it wouldn't be such a sausage fest at the conferences!

Originally posted by Ozy:But yeah, lets just go with our gut and say that it's because men and women are different biologically. Our instincts can't be wrong, can they?

You gave links to articles titled "Culture, Not Biology, Underpins Math Gender Gap" and such. This insinuates that I argued biology was the difference math and science gender gaps. NOWHERE did I say this, nor do I believe this. WTF does that have to do with what I said? Don't be a jerk and put words in mouth or build a strawman argument. Read my words.